US real estate investment trusts (REITs) posted the first weekly gain since mid-September for the five trading days through Oct 14. Commodities (broadly defined) gained ground last week too. But everything else was in the red among the major asset classes, based on a set of proxy ETFs.
Vanguard REIT (VNQ) climbed 1.1% last week, offering a respite from the downside trend that's been in force for the asset class since early August. In close pursuit: iPath Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index Total Return ETN (DJP) added 1.0%, marking the ETN's fourth consecutive weekly gain.
Otherwise, all the major asset classes lost ground last week. The biggest loss was posted by foreign corporate bonds via PowerShares International Corporate Bond (PICB), which tumbled 2.2%.
Last week's negative bias weighed on an ETF-based version of the Global Markets Index (GMI.F), an investable, unmanaged benchmark that holds all the major asset classes in market-value…
